, she scanned her sister's face, and was on the point
of embracing her once more. But she held back, scared and astonished
at the other's appearance. Around her temples, Madame Letore had two
long locks of white hair. All the rest of her hair was of a glossy,
raven-black hue; but there alone, at each side of her head, ran as it
were, two silvery streams which were immediately lost in the black
mass surrounding them. She was nevertheless only twenty-four years
old, and this change had come on suddenly since her departure for
Switzerland.

Without moving, Madame Roubere gazed at her in amazement, tears rising
to her eyes, as she thought that some mysterious and terrible calamity
must have fallen on her sister. She asked:

"What is the matter with you, Henriette?"

Smiling with a sad face, the smile of one who is heartsick, the other
replied:

"Why nothing I assure you. Were you noticing my white hair?"

But Madame Roubere impetuously seized her by the shoulders, and with a
searching glance at her repeated:

"What is the matter with you? Tell me what is the matter with you. And
if you tell me a falsehood, I'll soon find it out."

They remained face to face, and Madame Henriette, who became so pale
that she was near fainting, had two pearly tears at each corner of her
drooping eyes.

Her sister went on asking:

"What has happened to you? What is the matter with you? Answer me!"

Then, in a subdued voice, the other murmured:

"I have--I have a lover."

And, hiding her forehead on the shoulder of her younger sister, she
sobbed.

Then, when she had grown a little calmer, when the heaving of her
breast had subsided, she commenced to unbosom herself, as if to cast
forth this secret from herself, to empty this sorrow of hers into a
sympathetic heart.

Thereupon, holding each other's hands tightly grasped, the two women
went over to a sofa in a dark corner of the room, into which they
sank, and the younger sister, passing her arm over the elder one's
neck, and drawing her close to her heart, listened.

* * * * *

"Oh! I recognize that there was no excuse for one; I do not understand
myself, and since that day I feel as if I were mad. Be careful my
child, about yourself--be careful! If you only knew how weak we are,
how quickly we yield, we fall. All it needs is a nothing, so little,
so little, a moment of tenderness, one of those sudden fits of
melancholy which steal into your s